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New Owner: Disappointed with accuracy

May 20, 15 10:22

Dear all,

It is my pleasure to finally be part of this discussion forum after purchasing my first Vacheron Constantin, a Dual Time Overseas with a white dial.

My initial excitement for my purchase however, has given place to that of bitterness and dissapointment after monitoring the accuracy of the watch using the TWIXR app on my iPhone. The watch seems to be continiously running fast (really fast), gaining from 17.6 to 32.9 seconds per day since last Wednesday when I first wore it. I am aware of the "breaking in" period that brand new watches go through when they are first worn but in my opinion these deviations are very alarming and far beyond the deviations expected during the "breaking in" period.

What is your opinion? What course of action would you follow if you were in my shoes?

I think you have bought a wonderful watch. The OS is great. However I think if your watch is really running that fast, it is not acceptable. The best action you cam take is to take it back to the Authorised Dealer who will help you with taking back to a VC service centre to be fixed. I do not know what the problem might be but unfortunately omse of the many thousands of watches made, will always not be perfect. Take it back to the AD, and let them help you.

For those looking, it is actually TWIXT (I suspect a typo in the first post)

05/21/2015 - 19:00

I downloaded it ($4.99 in the US AppStore) and played around with it. It is very nice, but given the scale we are working on, I can see it would likely be prone to inaccuracy, if not used very carefully. I imagine a small mistake would make a significant difference. I am sure VC can test it on professional equipment. I used it time my 81580 taking two measurements roughly 24 hours apart and got a reading of +3.8 seconds/day.

I suspect the most important tthing would be to get your 12 o'clock alignment right, because that essentially defines the entire minute track. This can get pretty messed up if the watch face is not completely perpendicular to the camera lens. I practiced a bunch of times before I was comfortable using it. I will be VERY interested to hear how VC comes back after professionally testing his wacth.

and I must say that I am disappointed with ITS accuracy. Or, better to say it's precision, actually. I have been using it on 3 pieces (2 center seconds and 1 sub-dial seconds). While it can yield very good resutls, and I suspect that over many measurements, the data are at the least useful, it is not what I would call a definitive source.

On my Overseas, I was seeing excellent results on daily measurements - +0.5 seconds, +1.9 seconds, +1.2 seconds... Then, I got a +29.7 seconds. I thought that was odd. All of my hand-indicator lines looked good so I moved my center point - literally less than a mm and the measurement snapped to -0.5 seconds. It makes sense when you think about the Geometry and how a watch works - adjusting the certer point will have an effect exponentially greater than moving the end point around an "assumed-to-be-correct" seconds track. However, the center dot indicator is actually larger (at these scales) than the center wheel pinion (or various attachments thereto to carry the hands). So, I think the technique is solid, but the exectuion is finicky. I would LOVE to hear what a professional timer says about your piece.

For me, I am glad I bought the app, but it will never be a "real" watch timer for me.

Even if the sample size wasn't huge, I would LOVE to see you time the same watches with your Witschi and some other type (Kello or TWIXT) just to get a scientific understanding of how well it works. If not, I understand. But if so, then great!

I would recommend taking the watch back to the dealer and have their watchmaker put it on a timing machine. The watchmaker should be able to see if the amplitude is correct, which might indicate an issue with lubrication.

If nothing appears to be wrong, then after wearing the watch for a few weeks and seeing how it is running in various positions...a watchmaker can adjust the watch to match your wearing habits.